[5] I do not discuss the adequacy of Shelley’s position, or assert that he held it quite clearly or consistently. In support of my interpretation, of it I may refer to the Preface to the Cenci. There he repudiates the idea of making the dramatic exhibition of the story ‘subservient to what is vulgarly called a moral purpose,’ and, as the context shows, he identifies such a treatment of the story with the ‘enforcement’ of a ‘dogma.’
This passage has a further interest. The dogma which Shelley would not enforce in his tragedy was that ‘no person can truly be dishonoured by the act of another, and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love’; and accordingly he held that ‘if Beatrice had thought in this manner, she would have been wiser and better.’ How inexcusable then is the not uncommon criticism on the Cenci that he represents Beatrice as a perfect character and justifies her murder of ‘the injurer.’
Shelley’s position in the Defence, it may be added, is in total disagreement with his youthful doctrine and practice. In 1811 he wrote to Miss Hitchener, ‘My opinion is that all poetical beauty ought to be subordinate to the inculcated moral,’ and a large part of Queen Mab is frankly didactic. Even there, however, he reserved most of the formal instruction for the Notes, perceiving that ‘a poem very didactic is ... very stupid.’
[6] ‘I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science,’ he says in a letter to Peacock, Jan. 1819.
[7] And, I may add, the more it does this, so long as it does it imaginatively, the more does it satisfy imagination, and the greater is its poetic value.
THE LONG POEM
IN THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
THE LONG POEM
IN THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH[1]